Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria and New Treatments

Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria and New Treatments

Despite changes in the medical field towards the reduction of infections, the rate of antibiotic resistant infections is on the rise. This paper will look at a couple of different resistant bacteria as well as a new treatment that looks to be hopeful.

To understand the concept of antibiotic resistance, one must first understand how a certain bacteria would be able to fight off an antibiotic. When a person takes an antibiotic the drug kills the weaker or defenseless bacteria, leaving behind the stronger bacteria that are able to resist the the drugs used to kill them normally. These remaining bacteria then begin to multiply a millionfold a day. Antibiotics themselves do not cause the resistance but help to create an ideal situation for it to occur. A patient can develop a drug-resistant infection by either contracting the resistant bacteria from another person to begin with or by having it emerge during antibiotic therapy.

A more in depth description of how resistance occurs is as follows. The resistance results from gene action. Bacteria acquire genes containing resistance in any of three ways. In spontaneous DNA mutation, the bacterial DNA may mutate spontaneously. In a form of microbial sex, or transformation, one bacterium may take up the DNA from another bacterium. The most frightening method is resistance acquired from a a small circle od DNA called a plasmid. The plasmid can go from one type of bacterium to another. Therefore a single plasmid can provide many different resistance's. (3)

First there is MARS, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is the second greatest bacteria isolate in hospitals.(2) MRSA is not particularly dangerous

unless it reaches a high colonization ratio. If a high colonization is reached MRSA more often than not causes death eventually.

MRSA is a result of certain bacteria mutating or changing their genetic make up so ...